Birds and Beeps

Commentary

It was my good fortune to spend a night and morning in Cancun, Mexico, sleeping to the sounds of gentle waves and tropical breezes outside the long glass door that separated my hotel room from the paradise outdoors.

The real surprise came at dawn. The birds came out and sang for me. These were not ordinary bird sounds. Not sure if you have heard these tropical birds. They sound like orchestral virtuosi, birds that spent 15 years in lessons and practice to perfect their art. They sang with extended tones up and down and unexpected melodic patterns I had never heard.

I realized that the birds of Cancun compare with the London Symphony Orchestra whereas the birds outside my place in New England compare with a weekend garage band of amateurs. So sorry, New England birds: your betters live far to the South. Best that you not know that lest you feel too demoralized ever to sing again.

Birdsong is the original song. Countless composers have tried to recreate it in compositions. Antonio Vivaldi’s is the most famous but there is also Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony and Ottorino Respighi, who wrote the suite “The Birds” and included a recorded nightingale in “Pines of Rome.”

Most of the work by Olivier Messiaen is inspired by birdsong. “The birds are my first and my greatest teachers,” he said. “I have not finished attending their school.” He in particular was possessed of what is called synesthesia: he heard sounds in color so his compositions are really more like paintings. I’m not a huge fan of the results but I respect the art.

I never really comprehended the fixation on birdsong until I heard the birds of Cancun. It’s completely startling and I wondered what they looked like but they were hiding among the waving tropical trees. I swear that if I lived in a place like this I would never get any work done. I’m shocked that this place has any GDP at all.

The whole experience got me thinking about the sounds of our lives. Do we listen to the birds? Not so much. In public restaurants, you have to struggle to find one where you can hear yourself speak. Why these public places play techno music so loudly is a mystery to me.

I went to a charming French restaurant decorated in the Art Nouveau style. Just perfect. But the entire atmosphere was completely ruined by the electronic dance music playing loudly. I actually complained and said you have ruined all the work you put into decor. The owner/manager had no idea what I meant. Bizarre.

When we are not at the restaurants, in other public places, the ‘80s tunes never stop: grocery store, airport, pharmacy, everywhere. It’s like you cannot escape. Get an Uber and the guy is blasting music. Make a call to tech support, and you get put on hold to an excited saxophone player riffing to a beat. If you have ever been to a casino, you know that the beats are so loud and obnoxious, they drive you to drink, which, I suspect, is part of the point.

At least at home you can turn some of it off. But there is a problem. Every machine in your home beeps and buzzes at you. The dishwasher, for whatever reason, beeps nine times when it is done. When the electric burner or stove hits the preferred temperature, you are notified with a buzz. The bluetooth speaker plays a tune when it is on and when it turns off. The dryer sears your brain with a loud and low scream when the cycle is complete.

The microwave’s three beeps, then three more because you were not there within four seconds. The car’s chirp when you lock it and the double chirp when you unlock it, an entire conversation with a machine that has nothing else to say. The low-battery chirp of the smoke detector at 3:14 am, engineered by a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

The gas pump that plays an ad at you while you stand there captive. The self-checkout: “unexpected item in the bagging area,” delivered in the tone of a disappointed teacher. The reversing beep of a box truck at 5 a.m., which is the sound of a neighborhood being woken up on schedule. Leaf blowers, which sound like a souped-up muscle car, and which have replaced the rake, which had no sound at all except the rake.

The engineers who make these things have a mischievous job. They can build in a beep of any configuration without regard to any other sounds that might be in the vicinity. As a result, the whole house and the whole of life become a cacophony of electronic notifications, which is to say nothing of our laptops, phones, and tablets that offer a huge range of electronic sounds on a constant basis.

All this racket is surely doing something to our brains. Whatever it is, it cannot be good. Try turning them off for a day. You cannot. There is always something you miss or that cannot be rigged.

This is the cacophony of our lives, not pretty birds, not waves, not wind, not even fall leaves rustling on the ground, but rather these hideously unmusical digital beeps, blips, and buzzes, with the periodic interruption of loud pop music whenever we enter public life.

All of this interrupts thought and contemplation. It’s hard even to find a quiet place to pray in the modern world. Which makes the conspiracy part of my brain think this might be the whole point.

There is the option of noise-cancelling headphones. But they don’t just cancel noise. They cancel life outside of one’s head, making the wearer oblivious to everything outside the purely mental. This is not normal. It too is deeply artificial.

Recently a neighbor bought two hounds. She was mortified to discover that they bark insanely when she takes them out on a walk with one of the two-in-one leashes. They drag her everywhere with a demanding passion to go somewhere or do something. She is constantly fussing at them to stop. I feel bad for her because she cannot exactly return them. In fact, she quite loves them.

What does this mean for me? It means that every morning at 6am I am awakened by roaring hounds walking in my neighborhood. But you know what? I’ve come to love it. It sounds exactly like the fox hunts that I’ve seen in movies.

So that’s how I imagine it. When I hear these excited hounds, I imagine that they are followed by horses being ridden by men in red tailcoats and then expect to hear the sound of a French horn, the purpose of which I’ve never understood.

So no, I don’t mind these sounds. Sure, bagpipes would be better. Even better would be the orchestral birds of Cancun, clearly the elites of the bird kingdom with songs so sophisticated that they deserve Grammy Awards. I would rather listen to these birds than any others, and any birds, even the beach crows of New England, over any beeps.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.